The BBC has been forced to apologise following the airing of a Lily Allen performance earlier this year, in which the singer swore repeatedly live on air.

Allen reportedly used the word ‘fuck’ on six occasions during the Radio 1 Big Weekend broadcast in May, which aired during an early evening slot on the station. Following pressure from watchdog Ofcom, the BBC has now released a statement in which it admits it should have “only broadcast the remainder of her performance once it had been edited” following the instance of Allen’s first expletives.

However, Radio 1 also states that there’s a “strong argument for providing listeners unable to attend in person with the opportunity to enjoy an ‘as-live’ atmosphere that mirrored the experience of actually being at the event as closely as possible”.

The broadcast in question was aired between 5.30pm and 6.15pm on May 24. Before the broadcast, presenter Scott Mill warned listeners “We’re about to see Lily Allen. If you’re easily offended, please go to the website and check out some other performance.”

Allen was quoted in an interview earlier this year saying that “nobody at Radio 1 knows what the fuck they’re doing” after the station dropped the singer from their A-list. “They can pretend they’ve got a formula that works and [that] they ‘know’ they’re exactly in control of the game but they’re just not. No one knows,” she added.